Last week, we had the privilege of hosting 30 of NYC’s best and brightest digital publishing professionals for breakfast as a part of Keywee’s Distributed Content event series. We started the series about two years ago in an effort to bring together the NYC digital media and marketing community for educational, informative, and entertaining discussions.

We spent the morning talking about Q4-related topics, like affiliate commerce, new storytelling formats, and planning for 2019 with Keywee customers and friends from Bloomberg, National Geographic, Dow Jones, U.S News, The Atlantic, Forbes, and more.

While we discussed many things over the course of the morning, here are a few of the topics that kept coming up (aside from how delicious the babka from Breads Bakery was, of course).

1. Channel Balance is Key

For most publishers, looking back on their performance for the year means looking back at the performance of their content distribution channels. This includes the tried-and-true channels like Facebook and Google, as well as the more experimental ones like Flipboard, Reddit, Apple News, or even podcast ads.

While ultimately, each channel is weighed against ROI figures, a healthy balance of channels seemed to be the best approach for most teams. Inexpensive channels, like organic search, rarely tend to be scalable, and sometimes the channels with poor direct ROI numbers, like display ads, can have a positive effect on the performance of other channels.

2. There’s more to email than meets the eye

Email marketing may seem old fashioned, but it’s having a renaissance in the digital publishing world. Some marketers even told us they looked at it as its own content distribution channel.

To reap the full benefits of an engaged email audience, many publishers are putting paid dollars behind expanding their database. But beware – some sources acquire better users than others.

3. Ways to stay on top of industry trends

Everyone seemed to agree that staying on top of industry trends is hard. People were more than happy to exchange favorite sources of news, including Digiday, Nieman Lab, SmartBrief, The Hustle, and the Keywee newsletter (aw, shucks), among others.

If you’re interested in attending one of our next events, fill in the form below and we’ll keep you posted.

About Keywee

At Keywee, we make stories relevant and powerful for the world’s best storytellers — like The New York Times, The BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, and Red Bull.

Today, people aren’t coming to websites to search for content — stories find their audiences in feeds and apps. The upshot? Distribution is now the key for effective storytelling. Keywee’s platform unlocks audience insights using AI and data science, and infuses them into every step of the storytelling process: from topic selection, to story creation, to distribution and optimization. Keywee is backed by leading investors such as Google’s Eric Schmidt and The New York Times, and has been a fast-growing, profitable startup since its inception. To learn more, request a demo here.